Thursday, April 19, 2007

Kent: Is this the promised end?Edgar: Or image of that horror?(King Lear, 5.3.261 - 2)

And so senseless death makes its way to the forefront of our consciousnesses once again. 33 kids dead in VT, shot by an angry lone gunman; 200 killed in Baghdad, burnt alive by insurgent bombs. Both should be unimaginable, mind-numbingly tragic. Yet one strikes us deeper than the other. I don't propose to belittle the tragedy of either - I have a cousin in VT, and the sudden panic felt when I read of the news is something I don't want to repeat.

It still doesn't seem right though, that the deaths of 200 men, women, and children, each as full of potential as the slain young men and women in VT will inevitably be quickly forgotten by the war-weary (ironic, as many are not actually experiencing war) reading public, while those of the 33 are mourned and questioned.

It's true that they were in school, what's supposed to be a sanctuary, a place no one imagined would turn into a killing field. But then, neither is a market, is it. No place ever should be expected to be a killing field, no place but battleground.

But that's just it. As more and more of us imbibe and assume the mentality of us against the world, Earth has become a war zone. A world which has lost control of itself and its children, which has no ethic to refer to, no moral code, cannot protect itself. To what sense of responsibility does one appeal to when deciding to sell an 18 year old a gun? To which god, if one believes in a god at all, does one look to for guidance? And if life is really all about winning, why should other people losing matter?

The fact is, not all of us have answers to that. And those who do more often than not disagree with each other. As societies and cultures interact and integrate, they are creating a world which doesn't want to be a single entity; and as such, we live in a world which will eventually be, if it isn't already, tearing itself apart.